and you'd never slip away (and you'd never hear me say)
by Floodtail- AKA Floody
Summary: sometimes I hear you calling, from some lost and distant shore- carmilla;laura


_**carmilla universe;**_carmilla knew laura would die one day, but she knew she would never be ready for it.

_tried to walk together / but the night was growing dark / thought you were beside me / but I reached and you were gone / (hymn for the missing, red)  
><em>

The insistent beeping of IV monitors penetrates the crisp air that smells of coffee and sterilizers. The hushed murmuring of doctors is a dull background noise, but all is deathly quiet in one small room— the blinds are drawn, casting narrow, slanting light onto a raised bed. Dust motes swirl through the air, landing on the mahogany shelves, the empty vases. The air is stale and everyone in the room is quiet.

"I always knew this day would come."

"She is too young," Perry murmurs sadly. Years have passed, and her hair is graying now, and her hand shakes as she lays it on LaFontaine's. LaFontaine's face is drawn, their blue eyes full of sadness as they gaze down at the bed.

Laura's bed. She is older, and a disease— even the doctors don't know what it is, how to treat it— has taken her body; the pills, nothing, _no_ treatment has been enough.

Her honey hair is thinner, and her face has crinkled crows-feet at the corners of her eyes. Her lips are pale, and she is still.

Nothing lasts forever, but Carmilla held onto the foolish hope that _somehow _she could maybe outlast this.

"Leave." The figure at the foot of the bed speaks out. Her voice is ragged and raw, ripped with pain. "Please— I— I need a moment. Alone with her." 

Carmilla's dark eyes are glazed with hurt and pain and grief that stretches back so many years. She always knew this day would come. She always knew Laura would leave her.

But she thought she would have more time with someone she loves so much that her heart aches with the very entity of it. She will have years to breathe back her absence, to remember what an angel she was, to love her in the way she deserved.

That time has been cut short— cut to only hours left, a clock that will stop ticking. 

Their time together has only been a brief flicker of light, and now the shadows are closing in again, and she can remember how Laura tasted the first time they kissed, and how she felt aching around her, and how her eyes sparkled in the sun and how she laughed so beautifully and the way her voice curled around their promises and their _I love you's_— 

Carmilla digs her nails into her arm, little half-moons of red blooming on her skin. She traces the silver scar of where the Blade of Hastur burnt her flesh, and she looks up with a raw sob ripping its way from her throat. Tears prick the corners of her eyes, and she's never wanted to die more than she does right now— watching life slowly drift from Laura, listening to the steady beeping. 

"I love you," she whispers, but her voice is met with nothing but silence as she looks up to the unsteady, jagged line of Laura's heartbeat. She feels something twist and splinter in her chest, and it's beautifully awful; she is met with an aching silence as she looks at someone she loves so much it hurts. 

Laura's eyes flutter open for a moment, and Carmilla feels her heart leap to her throat. 

"C—Carm…" She whispers, and the IV monitor spikes and starts beeping harder, a tempo to the steady cracks that Carmilla can feel rippling across her chest. 

"Don't try to talk, cupcake," Carmilla whispers, and she swallows, choking; something is wrong, and she feels trapped in the prison bars of her ribs as she grips Laura's hand. 

Laura's eyes are so soft: she thinks maybe she could drown in them.

"I'm sorry…" She coughs, and it sounds like it's being torn from deep within her. "I'm so sorry I have to leave… I w- wanted more time with you… "

Carmilla shatters, then; she can feel her heart breaking in two, and Laura's eyes are fluttering shut, her beautiful eyelashes brushing her cheeks as she smiles shakily. 

Her smile is full of sunlight, just as it's always been. 

Tears are streaming down her face.

"I love you," she breathes out, and Carmilla touches her collarbone, and she can _feel _the dying heartbeat, there. It flutters like a trapped bird in her sternum. 

"I will find you one day," Carmilla says softly, but she feels like screaming, like ripping these jagged pieces of glass from her chest. 

She knows she's only been in this musty room for an hour or so, but watching Laura now: it feels like a lifetime, as if some part of her knows that she will be replaying this scene in her sleep for the rest of her immortal life, over and over again, like a dream where no matter how fast you run, the monster is always faster. 

_Sweetheart, _she remembers Maman breathing once, _you are only as damned as we all are.  
><em>

Laura smiles, a small smile, and her eyes shut with an eternity lying behind them. 

They fade like stars. 

Carmilla stands sharply and bites her tongue, hard. She doesn't bleed, but she knows the taste of blood, and she chokes on it. 

The flatline is still ringing in her ears as she stumbles out of the hospital room; she slumps against the wall and dully watches the doctors as they wheel out a cot, and Laura is covered by a white blanket.

That drives her over the edge, and she flees, remember another voice from another time.

_Go run and hide.  
><em>

She exists everywhere, really, in her absence. 

Carmilla lights some candles, that first night after she's gone. She wonders if she's out there, in some sort of universe or constellation, if she's watching now, if she misses Carmilla just as much. 

She cannot escape the memories; they drown her, and she remembers her with everything, every moment drags on like torture she cannot escape. She wonders if this is what Maman meant as damnation, because this is worse than any torture Hell could devise.

She sees Laura in another place. She sees her in her dreams, in some place that only exists in her mind. 

When she sleeps, Laura is there. 

Sometimes, she splinters, and she breaks at the smallest things— when she sees Laura's coffee mug, the fraying yellow pillow, the snips of her hair on an old pair of scissors. This is all a wave of darkness, the tears constricting her throat, and she can't get away from this. 

But getting away— that means forgetting, and she will be damned before she forgets Laura.

There is no beyond for her.

The bed they shared still smells like her, and Carmilla wakes suffocating one night in her scent, and feeling the empty, hollow absence where she was— cold now, chilled— drives her over the edge. She staggers out, and when she twists the top of a bottle of vodka, Laura's lipstick rims the edge. 

She attempts to drink her away, to drive away the same old song, the dust in the wind.

She drinks until she's dizzy and throwing up, but she can taste Laura in the burning, and that hurts worse. 

She goes out one night and looks out to where they used to sit under the stars. It's a small hill, topped with a whispering willow tree that casts out budding branches. It is a time of new life, a name that feels like a mockery to Carmilla.

She feels so alone. 

She has felt a lot of things since Laura.

They buried her here, so she could be close to the stars. She can hear her voice, remembers her speaking of Kipling and her dreams, how she wanted to review movies and become famous. 

Carmilla wonders if she dragged her down.

Laura deserved someone who would infinitely fill her sails, not a damned soul, blackened beyond repair. 

The grass is sparkling with dew, with thousands of little diamonds, and she is crying as she approaches the gray stone. Flowers, wilting now, droop over the sharp-etched tombstone. Carmilla picks up a petal and crushes it between her fingers. 

It bleeds, and she cannot bear it anymore. 

_Laura Hollis, _the gravestone reads, _1995— 2044._

Carmilla turns away then, a sharp movement; her heart is hollow, and she cannot breathe. It's the same song, and she takes in a breath that rakes at her lungs like knives. 

She remembers Laura's hands, the music when they danced, and her eyes; she closes her eyes, and she almost feels her. 

But when she opens them again, Laura is not by her side, and she realizes then and there. 

She will _never_ be there again.


End file.
